Book Review: The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon

Title: The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon
Published June 27, 2017, Putnam
Genre: contemporary fiction
Source: borrowed from the library
Rating: 5/5
A novel about jealousy, the unpredictable path of friendship, and the secrets kept in marriage, all set within the U.S. expat community of the Middle East during the rise of the Arab Spring. (publisher)

I really enjoyed this novel about the friendship and conflicts between two wives of American military personnel stationed in the Middle East during the Arab spring, with its uprisings and unrest. Besides describing the challenges of living in a new and mainly unfamiliar culture, the story focuses on two very different women, Cassie and Margaret, brought together by their husbands, Dan and Click's, military careers and by their need for friendship away from home.

Problems arise because the women have different backgrounds, personalities, and emotional needs. Their marriages are far from perfect and they both look for different things during their stay in Jordan. Cassie Hugo sticks to the rules of the embassy regarding travel safety and the ways women must be conservative in behavior and dress and in interacting with others, in particular men. Margaret Bradshaw, younger and more free spirited, disregards almost all the rules in wanting to experience the people and the culture in her own way. Cassie becomes upset and resentful when Margaret wants to branch out on her own to travel around the city and make friends with local people of all classes, relying on Cassie less and less and only to babysit her young toddler on occasion. This friendship comes to a head when something unexpected happens that creates serious conflict. Who, if anyone, is to blame?

The story was very interesting from a cultural point of view; it was also a revealing study in friendship that has some component of jealousy. Well written and engrossing, the book also left me appreciating some of the difficulties faced by families in the military living abroad.

Book beginning:

May 13, 2011
We are close, so close to Margaret's apartment, and I feel myself sink deeper into the passenger seat, relieved that I have succeeded in my small mission of getting Margaret out of her home, if only for a few hours. The day is a success. Sure, I had to let her drive something I usually avoid. Margaret is always too nervous, too chatty, looking around at the pedestrians forgetting to put on her signal, stomping on the brakes too late. But today I actually managed to snap her out of her sadness.I have done everything a good friend should.

Page 56:

Unlike me, Crick cannot tell a lie. For him, there is only one truth, and he tells it. 

Library book. 
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Book Beginning: Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

Title: Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Author: Madeleine Thien

Published October 11, 2016, W.W. Norton

Source: library

A novel about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s, and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. 

Book beginning:
In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. That year, 1989, my mother flew to Hong Kong and laid my father to rest in a cemetery near the Chinese border. Afterwards, distraught, she rushed home to Vancouver where I had been alone. I was ten years old.
Here is what I remember. 

Page 56:
Still, those pretty piano notes were mocking all the movements she made. They dripped from the kitchen to the bedroom to the parlour, seeping like rainwater over the persimmons on the table, the winter coats of her family, and the placid softness of Chairman Mao's face in the grey portrait framed on the wall. 

I like the descriptive writing, evocative and conveying a certain mood.  What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar: Book Beginning

Salt Creek, a debut novel by Lucy Treloar, published February 28, 2017 by Picador Australia. This is an historical novel about the Finch family who move from Adelaide, Australia during hard times to a remote part of the South Australian coast. The award-winning book covers "colonialism, race relations, social expectations on women, love, family, and duty."

Book beginning:

Chichester, England, November 1874

Mama often talked of this house when I was a child, and of its squirrels with particular fondness. She missed them as she missed all about her life here. They were fastidious, she said, and always prepared for flight. Their plumy tails jerking, they would hold a nut in their tiny hands, turning it and turning it looking for the weak point, angling their heads and tilting the nuts, their tiny teeth flashing, yet could not always penetrate the shell....

Page 56:

The cheese-making began, using the small moulds from the old dairy farm. I washed them and dried them to make them ready. 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Book Review: DUNBAR by Edward St. Aubyn

Dunbar

Dunbar is an old man, a former mogul, who retired and gave up his valuable shares as well as his seat on the board of trustees of his global empire. He is now in a retirement home, although a luxurious one, kept sedated, and is rendered literally helpless by his two greedy and conniving daughters. His third, a more sympathetic daughter, eventually comes to his rescue.The book is by Edward St. Aubyn, published October 24, 2017 by Hogarth.

Hogarth Press has been publishing books based on Shakespearean plays. Dunbar is based on the King Lear story. In this retelling of the King Lear play, we watch as the eighty-year -old Dunbar, now old, forgetful, and scattered, escapes from his retirement home with the help of his friend Peter, who plays the part of the unlucky Fool. Dunbar hides on the cold and snowy countryside as his daughters send people out to find him, to imprison him in an Austrian sanatorium or asylum, while they plunder his legacy and take it over finally for their own. The third and more sympathetic daughter, Florence, finds her father but the other daughters plot their revenge.

The book, set in modern times, follows King Lear quite closely. How the author adapts it to today is ingenious and the storytelling and characters remain compelling. The book concentrates on Dunbar's awakening to the beauty of the natural world, his  realization of the former cruel treatment of his daughter Florence, and to a late joy in the things in life that he finds are really meaningful. 

Five stars for an excellent reimagining of Shakespeare's play. 

Book beginning:

"We're off our meds," whispered Dunbar.

"We're off our meds/We're off our heads,"sang Peter, "we're out of our beds/ and we're off our meds!

Yesterday," he continued in a conspiratorial whisper, "We were drooling into the lapels of our terry cloth dressing gowns, but now we're off out meds! We've spat them out; we've tranquilized the aspidistras. If those fresh lilies you get sent each day..."

"When I think where they come from," growled Dunbar.

"Steady, old man."

Page 56:

Wrapped in his fur-collared overcoat, Dunbar was impervious to these meteorological threats and, as he extracted the Swiss credit card from his wallet, he seemed to enter into a kind of trance. 

I hope to read other books in the Hogarth Shakespeare series.
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader